In fact, (though I would appreciate a reference for this), Frank Schnittger elaborated
I wrote them down as I was listening to debate and vox pops on the RTE radio. It's not a particularly scientific sample, and no doubt more reasons will emerge.
I think there are a number of dangers and traps which we must avoid in this debate:
Sometimes how you do it is as important, if not more important than what you do. The failure of the Lisbon referendum sets us a real test. If we respond in an authoritarian, bullying or blustering way, the EU project will die in more countries than one. The EU has to take this negative result on the chin and come up with a better proposal, and the manner in which this proposal is arrived at is as important as what it eventually includes.
My suggestion is that the EP elected in 2009 should be specifically tasked with coming up with the new proposal - not the EU Council or Commission - and that that should be explicit at the time of the election. Essentially it will double as a constitutional assembly charged with coming up with a new constitution. It will then at least have a more direct legitimacy.
My guess is that, if sold in the right way, the Irish electorate would actually be more supportive of more radical proposals rather than less. The proposals need to capture the public imagination and represent a more comprehensive response to the global challenges facing us.
The murky elements behind the NO campaign may just have won a Pyhrric victory. What comes after Lisbon could be much more radical indeed. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
linca:
The approval needs not be a referendum ; but an European Parliament elected with constitutional powers as an major campaigning point could have that legitimacies. Governments, which are still systematically elected on national platforms, with EU policies an afterthought, don't have that legitimacy.
1. The EU bill of rights (Title II of the current treaty). 2. Union membership rules (Title IX of the current treaty, including Article I-60 on Voluntary withdrawal from the Union) 3. The 2009 European Parliament will be a constitutional assembly 4. Referendum rules: The treaty shall be put to a vote by referendum simultaneously in all EU members states. The result of the referendum will be binding if at least 50% of all EU citizens cast a valid vote in it. The treaty shall come into force only if at least 50% of valid votes in a binding referendum support the treaty. In that case, An EU member state shall be considered to have approved the treaty if it is supported by at least 50% of valid votes in that member state, and the number of valid votes in that member state is at least 50% of the eligible voters. An EU member state where the treaty is not approved shall hold a second referendum within 5 years, with the choices being approval of the treaty or withdrawal from the EU according to the provisions of the treaty. A transitory institutional regime shall apply as long as there are any remaining EU Member States which have not approved the treaty and have not yet held a second referendum.
The treaty shall come into force only if at least 50% of valid votes in a binding referendum support the treaty. In that case,
The member states are never going to agree to this, and the sovereigntist opposition would be very loud. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
An EU member state where the treaty is not approved shall hold a second referendum within 5 years, with the choices being approval of the treaty or withdrawal from the EU according to the provisions of the treaty.
You are effectively holding a gun to the head of each member state and saying that they have to agree to your proposed new treaty within 5 years or else face eviction. Why would they agree to this?
You have to start from the position that everybody will want to hold what they have or gain something else for anything they give up. This assumes that we are playing a non-zero-sum gain - i.e. that the size of the cake to be divided will up (in smaller or adjusted portions) will grow sufficiently to ensure that everyone is a net beneficiary.
You could argue that the Irish electoral decision to reject Lisbon is rational if the benefits of further expansion/rationalisation of decision making were outweighed by the loss of relative weight in the weighted majority voting system.
Nobody really made the case for why the EU as a whole would benefit significantly from the new arrangements very convincingly - and so the loss of weighted voting strength could be presented as a net loss without compensatory benefits.
If people still trusted the EU/Irish Government to deliver improved overall benefits that might not have been a problem - but that trust now seems to be gone - for any number of reasons alluded to elsewhere in these threads. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
The fact that the Chater of Fundamental Rights was mostly redundant given the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that European nations have rather advanced constitutions of their own already (this is 2008, not 1776) doesn't help. And the UK, the only backwards country without a bill of rights wants to get rid of its own Human Rights Act... When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
I disagree - the problem is that the treaty was about streamlining the organization and not about anything affecting the citizen directly
I tried to argue - in my LTE of the Irish Times published some time back, that it was in Ireland's, Europe's and World's best interest that a more effective, efficient, cohesive and influential EU should emerge onto the world stage - and thus whilst Ireland would have a smaller slice of the pie (in terms of weighted majority voting) it would be compensated for by the fact that the pie had grown.
However I was about the only one who did so. Perhaps the political parties did their focus group thing and decided they had to compete with the NO side on bread and butter, local, and narrowly define nationalist issues, but on that basis I don't see how they could win the argument.
There is a lot of negative rhetoric about bloated bureaucracies and back room dealing, and when the EU actually tries to do something about this - it i voted down as giving more power to the bureaucrats.
The problem is the EU vision has been eclipsed by the nationalist vision. Everything else is boring implementation detail that people don't want to know about. Citizens do buy into visions of they are well argued and presented, but vision they bought into was one of an undemocratic EU foisting complex and opaque schemes onto them which would have unspecified and hard to determine impacts on their lives - more regulation, higher oil prices, poorer terms of trade, you name it - it was all the fault of the EU - an image that has also been fostered by local politicians to deflect blame from themselves.
I would love to have an age breakdown of the voting patterns. I suspect the younger the more NO the vote "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
Citizens do buy into visions of they are well argued and presented, but vision they bought into was one of an undemocratic EU foisting complex and opaque schemes onto them which would have unspecified and hard to determine impacts on their lives - more regulation, higher oil prices, poorer terms of trade, you name it - it was all the fault of the EU - an image that has also been fostered by local politicians to deflect blame from themselves.
